Freak Flag
by NixDucky
Summary: In which Sam has a thing for cute page flags.


**AN: Happy Birthday Worm! **

**This one can actually qualify as a ficlet!**

**As this work is a gift for my usual beta, it has not been beta'd.**

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Sam had always been a book freak. Even when all their lives had consisted of was moving from town to town and school to school, Sam was weird about books. Always had at least three on his person, at all times. Had a duffel that was just for books.

It had finally gotten to the point where John had put his foot down.

"We don't have space for all these books, Sam. It's not as if we're a library. We're hunters. We're on the move. We need weapons not books."

Dean still winced when he remembered that particular fight. At John's implication that weapons were better than books, Sam first went a really interesting shade of red, which slowly turned into a rather alarming purple, and finally became a sickly sort of blue which nearly had Dean panicking because the kid wasn't breathing. That's how furious he was. Even John hesitated when he noticed the rainbow that was Sam's face.

John wasn't going to back down though, and his reasons _were _practical. John was still driving the Impala back then, and Sam's ever growing collection of books was becoming a problem, even though Dean knew well enough that those books had, in fact, saved their lives more than once. In the end Sam had talked John into going past Bobby's place. Sam must've phoned Bobby to warn him, because the look Bobby gave John Winchester as he lugged the heavy duffel full of books into his house was another thing Dean would not forget. Bobby was obviously just as disgusted with John's opinion of the usefulness of books as Sam was, if not more so. Bobby had cleared three shelves in his study for Sam's books. And every time they stopped at Bobby's over the years, more space had been made. More bookshelves added. There had never even been any discussion about it.

Fortunately, by the time Bobby's house had burned down, most of Sam's books had already been moved to the basement, simply because there was no longer any space in the study. Not all of them, the fire had taken some, but Sam had been able to save most of them. He'd kept them in Jody's garage—and fretted about them constantly for almost the entire year that they were there. When they'd found the Bunker, Sam's eyes had lit up at the sight of the library, and Dean had known exactly what was going on in Sam's brain. Good thing the Men of Letters had thought ahead, because there were still plenty of shelves for Sam to fill.

And because Sam _used _all his books, referred to them constantly, he had always left placeholders all over them. Bookmarks in the books—some books had several bookmarks throughout—and Post-Its or flags marking particular pages. Eventually the flags overtook the bookmarks. To Dean it looked like most books had almost every page marked in some way. Never dogeared though. Dean had learned that lesson well. That had been the first time Sam had punched him. Dean had been looking at a book Sam had brought to him, so proud that he had found something that could help him and their dad on their current hunt. Dean didn't even remember what they'd been hunting, because the moment he had turned down the corner of a page to mark something he wanted to show John, his brother had slugged him. Sam had only been about eight years old at the time, and his aim had been off, so he kind of got Dean in the neck and it hadn't really hurt. Dean had been so shocked he hadn't even gotten mad. Sam had grabbed the book and stomped out of the room. They hadn't spoken about it again. And Dean had never dogeared a page again (not in Sam's presence or where Sam would find it, anyway).

Eventually Dean had started to notice that the flags were no longer just colorful rectangles of paper protruding from the pages. First there were different shapes; triangles, circles, stars. And then he noticed things getting more interesting. There were flags in the shape of trees. Some books were all pine trees, some books had flags shaped like a kid's drawing of a tree. Dean would swear he'd even seen a small Swahili book with flags in the shape of baobab trees. And it just escalated from there.

Soon it was animals. There were frogs, there were cats. One book was all ducks while another was covered in white llama flags with varying expressions on boredom depicted on the face. Page flags with faces. Dean had sprained his eyeballs he'd rolled them so hard.

"So, is there a system?" Dean had asked one day.

"Huh?" Sam had been reading. Because of course he had.

"You know, for the flags. Do ducks mean demons, llamas ghosts or something?"

Sam had looked at Dean with his mouth hanging slightly open, an expression of awe on his face. His eyes had glazed over slightly. Then he'd given his head a shake, stood up and walked purposefully over to the bookshelves. And Sam had started to pull books off the shelves, arranging them in piles on tables all over the library. Dean thought he heard Sam muttering, "ducks for demons, llamas for ghosts. Frogs can be shifters. The trees can stand for wendigos. Cats… cats can be vampires…"

_Oh shit _, Dean thought. _What have I done? _


End file.
